misanthropology

“That's way too loud, kid”.

“No, you're too damn old, gramps”.

Bezvan had been a regular at the Metrovomix for months now.

Within moments of entering the hall, he would still break into a secret, odorless sweat. Jaws clenching into a vise, his head would reflexively swivel staccato every few seconds towards the door, in the manner of a wind-up toy.

As the night wore on, however, and the lights dimmed gradually, the dull mechatronic beat had a way of nursing him into a state of shallow, joyless sublimation.

In his younger days, Bez, as he was known back then, had fancied himself a people-watcher -- voluntarily immersing himself into situations that would offer the slightest vantage of anonymous observation -- as a benign alien collector of human experience might.

Spiraling down the faces in detail, he would extract subtler imperfections with each sweep, with the intent of refining his physiognomic deductions. The initial appearance of an alluring visage would gradually devolve into little more than an aggregate of little deviations from the classic ideal – the faintest bent of the nose as it wound down the center of the face, the slightest disproportion between the frontal and profile diameters, an unseemly horizontal slope along the frontal plateau; not even a healthy asymmetry (to the casual observer) between the eyebrows was lost. There were the ears, of course – there was no other organ of such prominence glaringly grotesque variations of which in his judgement escaped notice so easily regardless of other more conspicuous defects.

Now, he found himself the subject of a collective, unwavering gaze wherever he went by the teeming, faceless, lustful vermin of youth. That look – stolid, yet not entirely innocent – it engendered in him a certain instinctive revulsion that to his eyes arose from the unreflective panoply of maya.

"If I were really that old, little punk, I wouldn't be complaining about my hearing. I bet you couldn't hear your floppy eardrums if they slapped your ugly cheeks!".

The kid stood there silently for a few seconds, with a vaguely amused look. Then he lifted both of his pudgy, hairless hands from behind his own head and raised a dripping, glistening, chalky mass into the air.

It quivered a little, as he gingerly lay the thing on the bar.

"Care to study it, gramps?" .

Bezvan's mouth curled involuntarily as his senses dimmed.

"Works like a charm with them old fogies", the boy's voice crowed.

A titter broke in the crowd that had assembled.

"Imbeciles", Bez mumbled under his gasping breath as his eyeballs rolled up.